Lucy Foley - The Guest List

By the end of the evening the dress will probably be filthy, even I can’t mitigate that. But I will have it shortened to just below the knee and dyed a darker colour. I am nothing if not practical. I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.

I move over to where I have the table plan pinned to the wall. Will says I’m like a general hanging his campaign maps. But it is important, isn’t it? The seating can pretty much make or break the guests’ enjoyment of a wedding. I know I’ll have it perfect by this evening. It’s all in the planning: that’s how I took The Download from a blog to a fully fledged online magazine with a staff of thirty in a couple of years.

Most of the guests will come over tomorrow for the wedding, then return to their hotels on the mainland – I enjoyed putting ‘ boats at midnight ’ on the invites in place of the usual ‘ carriages ’. But our most important invitees will stay on the island tonight and tomorrow, in the Folly with us. It’s a rather exclusive guest list. Will had to choose the favourites among his ushers, as he has so many. Not so difficult for me as I’ve only got one bridesmaid – my half-sister Olivia. I don’t have many female friends. I don’t have time for gossip. And groups of women together remind me too much of the bitchy clique of girls at my school who never accepted me as their own. It was a surprise to see so many women on the hen do – but then they were largely my employees from The Download – who organised it as a not entirely welcome surprise – or the partners of Will’s mates. My closest friend is male: Charlie. In effect, this weekend, he’ll be my best man.

Charlie and Hannah are on their way over now, the last of tonight’s guests to arrive. It will be so good to see Charlie. It feels like a long time since we hung out as adults, without his kids there. Back in the day we used to see each other all the time – even after he’d got together with Hannah. He always made time for me. But when he had kids it felt like he moved into that other realm: one in which a late night means 11 p.m., and every outing without kids has to be carefully orchestrated. It was only then that I started to miss having him to myself.

‘You look stunning.’

‘Oh!’ I jump, then spot him in the mirror: Will. He’s leaning in the doorway, watching me. ‘Will!’ I hiss. ‘I’m in my dress! Get out! You’re not supposed to see—’

He doesn’t move. ‘Aren’t I allowed to have a preview? And I’ve seen it, now.’ He begins to walk towards me. ‘No point crying over spilled silk. You look – Jesus – I can’t wait to see you coming up the aisle in that.’ He moves to stand behind me, taking a hold of my bare shoulders.

I should be livid. I am . Yet I can feel my outrage sputtering. Because his hands are on me now, moving from my shoulders down my arms, and I feel that first shiver of longing. I remind myself, too, that I’m far from superstitious about the groom seeing the wedding dress beforehand – I’ve never believed in that sort of thing.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say, crossly. But already it sounds a little half-hearted.

‘Look at us,’ he says as our eyes meet in the mirror, as he traces a finger down the side of my cheek. ‘Don’t we look good together?’

And he’s right, we do. Me so dark-haired and pale, him so fair and tanned. We make the most attractive couple in any room. I’m not going to pretend it’s not part of the thrill, imagining how we might appear to the outside world – and to our guests tomorrow. I think of the girls at school who once teased me for being a chubby swot (I was a late bloomer) and think: Look who’s having the last laugh .

He bites into the exposed skin of my shoulder. A pluck of lust low in my belly, a snapped elastic band. With it goes the last of my resistance.

‘You nearly done with that?’ He’s looking over my shoulder at the table plan.

‘I haven’t quite worked out where I’m putting everyone,’ I say.

There’s a silence as he inspects it, his breath warm on the side of my neck, curling along my collarbone. I can smell the aftershave he’s wearing, too: cedar and moss. ‘Did we invite Piers?’ he asks mildly. ‘I don’t remember him being on the list.’

I somehow manage not to roll my eyes. I did all of the invitations. I refined the list, chose the stationers, collated all the addresses, bought the stamps, posted every last one. Will was away a lot, shooting the new series. Every so often, he’d throw out a name, someone he’d forgotten to mention. I suppose he did check through the list at the end pretty carefully, saying he wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed anyone. Piers was a later addition.

‘He wasn’t on the list,’ I admit. ‘But I saw his wife at those drinks at the Groucho. She asked about the wedding and it seemed total madness not to invite them. I mean, why wouldn’t we?’ Piers is the producer of Will’s show. He’s a nice guy and he and Will have always seemed to get along well. I didn’t have to think twice about extending the invitation.

‘Fine,’ Will says. ‘Yes, of course that makes sense.’ But there’s an edge to his voice. For some reason it has bothered him.

‘Look, darling,’ I say, curling one arm around his neck. ‘I thought you’d be delighted to have them here. They certainly seemed pleased to be asked.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he says, carefully. ‘It was a surprise, that’s all.’ He moves his hands to my waist. ‘I don’t mind in the least. In fact, it’s a good surprise. It will be nice to have them.’

‘OK. Right, so I’m going to put husbands and wives next to each other. Does that work?’

‘The eternal dilemma,’ he says, mock-profoundly.

‘God, I know … but people do really care about that sort of thing.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you and I were guests I know where I’d want to be sitting.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Right opposite you, so I could do this.’ His hand reaches down and rucks up the fabric of the silk skirt, climbing beneath.

‘Will,’ I say, ‘the silk—’

His fingers have found the lace edge of my knickers.

‘Will!’ I say, half-annoyed, ‘what on earth are you—’ Then his fingers have slipped inside my knickers and have begun to move against me and I don’t particularly care about the silk any more. My head falls against his chest.

This is not like me at all. I am not the sort of person who gets engaged only a few months into knowing someone … or married only a few months after that. But I would argue that it isn’t rash, or impulsive, as I think some suspect. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s knowing your own mind, knowing what you want and acting upon it.

‘We could do it right now,’ Will says, his voice a warm murmur against my neck. ‘We’ve got time, haven’t we?’ I try to answer – no – but as his fingers continue their work it turns into a long, drawn-out groan.

With every other partner I’ve got bored in a matter of weeks, the sex has rather too quickly become pedestrian, a chore. With Will I feel like I am never quite sated – even when, in the baser sense, I am more sated than I have been with any other lover. It isn’t just about him being so beautiful – which he is, of course, objectively so. This insatiability is far deeper than that. I’m aware of a feeling of wanting to possess him. Of each sexual act being an attempt at a possession that is never quite achieved, some essential part of him always evading my reach, slipping beneath the surface.

Is it to do with his fame? The fact that once you attain celebrity you become, in a sense, publicly owned? Or is it something else, something fundamental about him? Secret and unknowable, hidden from view?